A Changeling Heart

by Rocket Lawn Chair

Chapter 3

***

While she followed Luna to the kitchens, Twilight churned through various escape plans in her head. She didn’t even care about having a private cry anymore, but she certainly was not prepared to spend the night avoiding conversation with her sister.

Steadily she slowed her pace so she was always several feet behind Luna, close enough to not arouse suspicion, yet far enough to give her the time she needed to scheme. Perhaps she could simply teleport herself out of the castle, maybe all the way to Ponyville, if she needed to. If she were stealthy, she thought she could manage to cast a spell and conjure an illusory version of herself, then silently slip away.

But she never got the chance to put her plan into action. To Twilight’s dismay, Luna found the kitchens with uncanny speed, so her hopes of escaping melted away almost as rapidly as her level-headedness.

The kitchen was warm and shone with the various slabs of orange light cast down from gleaming pots and pans which hung anxiously above the pre-lit stoves that the cooks had set before breakfast. There were three, maybe four early-morning cooks shuffling midst the countertops, kneading dough or polishing knives that the kitchen colts had forgotten to clean after dinner last night. They looked very surprised to see the two princesses, and made hasty bows that wouldn’t interrupt their activities for more than a second. It suddenly occurred to Twilight that dawn was only a few short hours away.

“Tell me what’s wrong, sister,” said Luna, once she and Twilight were both seated at an isolated table behind the brick oven, and sipping cups of steaming tea. She bent her head closer to Twilight in a manner that forced Twilight to dodge her horn. Luna apologized sheepishly, then continued.

“You know you can trust me with whatever you say. Why have these persistent nightmares tortured you so over these past few weeks?”

Twilight held her cup to her muzzle and blew over it. It trembled in her hooves. Would the Canterlot newspapers eat that up as well, if they saw her nerves so frayed she couldn’t hold a teacup steady? The headline “Princess of Friendship Cracks Under Pressure” sounded horribly newsworthy in her head.

“You’re asking me about nightmares? I imagine you would know more about them than I do,” she muttered.

Luna smiled, sipping her tea mildly. She seemed completely at ease. “Dreams are extensions of our subconscious thoughts,” she said, “reflections of what troubles our minds when we’re awake. I don’t create all of them. Mostly I watch.”

“Then you know what I’ve been dealing with.”

“Indeed, I know what. Not why.”

“Well,” sighed Twilight heavily, “it’s not easy dealing with them night after night, driving you crazy until you don’t know how to separate what’s true and what’s not. It puts a huge strain on you when you can’t trust your own senses. And even more than the nightmares, it’s been…...it’s just been a very long week.”

“Hmmm, I see,” hummed Luna. Twilight thought it sounded like a hum somepony makes when they’ve heard the story already, now they’re anxious to get to the juicy parts. Beyond that Luna wasn’t giving any hints that she was in any sort of hurry.

“I understand,” Luna continued, and it sounded like she did understand, but Twilight remained wary. “Watching you and Celestia run around back and forth between your typical duties—then on top of that dealing with all those obnoxious reporters. It’s no wonder you haven’t been able to spend much time with your wife and daughter lately. At least, that’s what Celestia tells me.”

Twilight didn’t reply right away, and instead took a long sip of tea that burnt her tongue. She considered what Luna had said, then considered how long it had been since she and Celestia had read together in the gazebo, or tossed crusts to the swans in the pond. Between her duties as princess and caring for Alya, Celestia hadn’t had a moment alone with Twilight in weeks. No wonder her hoof felt so cold, thought Twilight.

She tapped the side of the cup pensively, thinking if she burned her tongue enough that before long it would be too damaged to form coherent speech.

“No, that’s not the problem,” she lied bluntly. “But, like I said, it’s been a long week, and I really don’t want talk about all the stress lately. Just thinking about it...ugh...Can we change the subject?”

Luna folded her hooves in front of her mouth with a particular sort of eloquence, which was enough of an answer in itself. She wasn’t about to let Twilight off the hook. Her stiff posture alone created what Twilight imagined was a barrier between her and her sister, as though Twilight were nothing more than an insect sitting helplessly at the other end of a microscope. It was this impersonal elegance which Luna seemed to have perfected over her many years in exile that made her extremely frustrating to interact with one-on-one. She stared piercingly at Twilight, not batting a single eyelash, her jaw set in stone, like a statue that is trying very hard to look alive.

Twilight stewed in heated silence, then cracked her neck and waited for Luna to say something. The fire in the oven crackled and waited for the cooks to stoke it. She wondered why they didn’t.

The silence persisted until Twilight’s teacup was empty and her tongue had gone numb. She showed Luna the empty cup and rose like she was going to fetch more tea. Luna halted her with a wave of her hoof, then summoned a fresh cup out of nowhere as though she’d been keeping one in case Twilight tried to make a break for it. She set the steaming cup down, and Twilight made a forced “Thank-you.” Once more they sat and waited, staring across the table at each other until Tartarus decided to freeze over, or the cooks decided to shoo them out of the kitchen.

Sweat trickled down Twilight’s nose and dripped to the table a with a soft plink that echoed loudly in her head. Another bead tickled her nose and she started to tap her teacup. Time started ticking to the steady tap-tap of her hooves.

Tap.

Tap Tap

Ta—plink...Tap.

“Out, I need to get out.” The thought raced around her head at a dizzying speed.

Tap Tap.

“Out. Anywhere.” She didn’t know where. Out of Luna’s gaze, out of Equestria, out of her mind, she didn’t care.

She chewed her lip and her hooves quaked. Why was everything so hot? Hot, smothered, oppressive….

Oven burning. Luna staring. Tea seething.
.
Tap Tap.

“Leave me alone,” she wanted to scream at everything at once.

Clink!

She dropped the cup, partially by accident.

The scalding tea streamed down onto her lap, sending a searing pain through her thighs, but she tried to look as though she hadn’t been preparing for it. She yelped, then leapt from her seat, wiping the hot liquid out of her fur as quickly as possible. The tea was hotter than she’d expected, which helped her startled leap to look more convincing.

“Ooh, that stuff’s really hot, might even leave a burn,” she muttered, even as Luna rose to offer a cold, damp cloth—which again she seemed to have mysteriously on-hoof. “Thanks, Luna, but I don’t think tea is going to help me tonight. What I really need is sleep, so if you want to knock me out cold, be my guest,” she added with a wry chuckle.

Luna smiled, but otherwise appeared unfazed.

“I know this week has been trying for you, but it’s upsetting to watch you alienate yourself from everypony else. Celestia worries about you, and so do I. Don’t forget we both love you.”

Twilight huffed indignantly. She was alienating herself? Luna had it backwards. Luna was part of the problem.

“It’s not like —— I haven’t forgotten that!”

“Then tell me what’s been bothering you. Tell me about your daughter.”

“Alya is…..she’s not my....” Twilight fumbled around for the words she wanted to say. “Alya is a changeling, and we….we didn’t see that for two years. It’s a little, erm…..surprising.”

That was putting it mildly.

“I, um…..Well, actually, Celestia and I don’t really know how to handle this.” She coughed and racked her brain for a direction to lead the conversation which would hopefully end with her leaving the room, and more importantly, Luna. “It’s taken a lot out of us—especially me—to keep up with all the changes this past week. I’ve hardly slept a wink since Sunday, and….I mean, have you seen my mane? Have you smelled it? Just speaking in general, I’m pretty gross right now.”

“But,” inserted Luna, suddenly drawing up very close to Twilight, close enough for her presence to dominate Twilight’s field of vision, “this isn’t about your gross mane or your run-ins with snoopy reporters, or even about your recurring nightmares. I’m looking for the heart of the issue. I’m wondering why my sister would pour hot tea all over herself just to get out of talking with me about her feelings.”

Twilight’s cheeks flushed. The fur on the back of her neck prickled uncomfortably. Luna knew. Somehow she knew what Twilight was thinking. She knew what Twilight truly thought about Alya. She knew, but she would never understand.

Twilight shifted in her seat like she could dodge Luna’s inscrutable expression. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting, it’s not like that!…...Rrgh! I don’t want to explain it! Everything’s too complicated.”

“Please, Twilight, if you don’t want to talk to me, at least help me understand.”

“But that’s just it—you wouldn’t understand. Can we be done now?”

“I’m only looking out for you, my sister, and right now you’re just making this harder for yourself. If you open up to me, I know we can work it out together.”

“You want to work it out?” And how did she expect to do that if she only saw things her way? She hadn’t been through what Twilight had been through. She still thought Alya could be a normal little filly? She obviously hadn’t had the little creature crawl into bed beside her and felt its horrible, chitinous body against her side.

“...Just…..wouldn’t understand……” she muttered. Her horn began to hum with a purple light.

“Celestia has told me some very concerning things about you,” said Luna. She took a step back, eyeing Twilight’s horn dubiously. “She’s told me that you refuse to nurse Alya anymore, that you refuse to sing her to sleep, that you seem disgusted just being in the same room as her.”

Twilight locked her jaw and shook her head. Sweat began sliding from her forehead and down her neck, and the kitchen suddenly felt too small. The walls on every side seemed to be only a few feet apart—and why was it getting so hot in here? She glared at the nearby oven, which continued pumping out wave after wave of dreadful heat. Disconcertingly, this was starting to feel like one of her nightmares.

“We’re done talking about Alya, I’ve heard enough about Alya,” she growled, her eyes welling with hot, angry tears. The words Luna had said about Celestia hurt. A lot. In spite of all the lullabies and good-night kisses, she had wanted to believe that Celestia would still wake up one day and see Alya for the monster she was. The things Luna had said all but dashed those hopes. Now there was nopony she could trust.

So, even Celestia had betrayed her now.

A sick feeling welled up from deep in Twilight’s gut. She bent over, breathing heavily as the room began to spin and heave. Her vision began to go dim and go blurry. Even Luna became swept up into the roiling collection of hazy images. The world around her abandoned any reason or sense.

“Really? Even Celestia?”

“Please tell me what’s wrong, Twilight. I truly do want to help you.”

Twilight jumped, then almost screamed in anger-twisted surprise. Her eyes snapped back into focus, then she recoiled as if her entire body had tasted something sour. Her legs quivered, her horn was poised to impale the next pony to get too close. Luna stood before her, head bent low, and a look so sincere it appeared as though she wanted to blame it all on herself.

“Leave me alone!” fumed Twilight. The air above her frazzled mane crackled with purple lightning as the furious spell wound itself up on the tip of her horn. “Can’t you just leave me alone? It’s bad enough to have everypony in Equestria clustering here to learn the latest scoop about our daughter-turned-changeling, and then Celestia fawning over her—it—like she thinks she’s still our daughter! Then she wants me to act like nothing’s different? She wants me to act like Alya hasn’t been feeding on our love for the past two years, like.…like....”

Her eyes scanned the room glaringly. Her jaw tightened. She reeled as she pictured Celestia nursing that foul thing Alya had become; all black with dead eyes and dripping fangs. Her horn flared up angrily. Her lips quivered while she tried desperately to get the words out of her mouth.

“....a changeling! That’s all she’s ever been! A disgusting parasite!”

The lightning tendrils stemming from Twilight’s horn fizzled and hummed, filling the air with a tangy scent, making Luna’s mane tingle and her fur stand on end. Some of the tendrils reached behind Twilight, arcing all the way to her flank.

“You want to know what’s wrong, Luna? Open your eyes!”

She released the spell, and all at once the oven, the kitchen, and the two ponies became petrified in a brilliant purple flash. Color drained from the world like a bleeding watercolor. The air turned stale and empty, and if you breathed it, it would feel like you hadn’t breathed at all.

Twilight—now airborne—loomed above Luna like a deadly thunderhead, raining tremendous arcs of lightning from her forehead.

“Nothing has gone right for me ever since we discovered Alya was a changeling. Nothing! Shall I give you a recap the last two weeks?”

The pale scene began to shift and swirl as if all the contents of reality had been tossed into a washing machine, and now curtains were merging with floor tiles and moonlight was running through streaks of uncongealed silvery-grey kitchenware. Luna and Twilight remained the only solid things in the world, until new shapes began to materialize between intermittent sparks and flashes from the energized memory spell. It didn’t take long for these figures to take on more familiar shapes as the licking tendrils of Twilight’s spell coaxed them into existence.

The conjured flashback became filled with Twilight’s most poignant memories from the past two weeks, populated by near-still images of ponies and places which Luna recognized. There was a hazy image of Celestia sitting in her bed with her head bent over baby Alya. Another image showed an entire crowd of ponies pressing through a door that was being desperately closed behind them, the floor in their wake littered with dropped notepads and press tags. And another showed Twilight herself sitting beside Celestia on the bank of a peaceful lake with their adopted daughter rolling in the grass between them. Luna did not recognize this one.

All of these images were disjointed and incomplete, and flecks of their profiles kept falling off and reassembling themselves somewhere else, like several jigsaw puzzles which have their own ideas about how they’re meant to be put together. It made the overall picture look anxious, more feverish, like something you’d wake from with a pounding heart and wild eyes.

“There, this is what you wanted to see, right?”

Twilight descended slowly, her face softer, her tone softer still. Most of the fire had gone out of her eyes, and the furious sparks around her mane had subsided into languid strands of purple light, wavering gently against the fuzzy grey backdrop. She hung her head like a heavy cloud, the somber aftermath of a raging storm.

“You’ve already seen most of these, I’m sure,” she said. “Some of these memories come back to haunt me in my nightmares, but most of the time they just sit in my mind, like this one. I think about this one all the time.”

She pointed out the lakeside scene.

“That was more than a year ago, when we went to Dewdrop Lake for a picnic. Alya picked a daisy for me to put in my mane. She fell into the lake and nearly drowned. I remember that was the first time I truly felt like her mother.”

She reached out to the hazy scene. Her hoof fell right through Alya’s pale, giggling face. There was confusion in Twilight’s own face. There was pain, too. The pain was confusing, even though she thought it should be obvious.

“I….I don’t love her anymore. Do I deserve any of this?”

A sharp jab of purple lightning cut straight into the dream scene, causing the picture of the lake to shatter before their eyes. All the hazy grey particles scattered and fizzed with Twilight’s magic, then settled into dying embers around their hooves.

Another dream quickly replaced the first. This time it was a scene inside an orphanage, showing Twilight and Celestia stooping over little Alya. This must be the first time they’d ever met the filly, thought Luna; two years ago at the Welcome Heart’s Orphanage in Canterlot. Nopony knew where the child had come from. She had been overlooked by dozens of other families until that day when Celestia and Twilight came to adopt her.

Even in the blurry scene Luna could see the child’s wide-eyed terror as the two benevolent alicorns loomed overhead, looking clueless as they tried to soothe her. Pretty remarkable, she thought, how quickly Alya had taken to Twilight and Celestia after that.

“Do you remember your thoughts, your feelings, when you saw Alya for the first time, Twilight?” Luna asked.

Twilight nodded and said, “I was nervous. I knew I was coming out of that orphanage a different pony, a mother, even. When I saw how afraid she was of Celestia and I, that made me more nervous than ever. I didn’t know if I was the right pony to be her mother. I didn’t know if we were making some terrible mistake that would ruin this filly’s life. After all, I pointed Alya out to Celestia, told her she looked like she needed a mother. I had no idea what we were really signing on for.”

“You signed on to be a caring mother. You signed on to raise a filly to marehood.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect….all this!” sputtered Twilight. The scenes around them—of Celestia nursing the infant changeling, of the paparazzi squeezing through the castle doors—became highlighted as Twilight pointed them out in turn. “I didn’t know any of this would happen. I didn’t mean to put Celestia through this nightmare.”

She trailed off, her head sinking low. The energy from her spell faded, then snuffed itself out completely.

Now the scenes began to melt away, all the fuzzy grey figures disassembling to make room for reality to come back. The windows and tile floors re-collected themselves into their familiar shapes, and brick after brick began stacking up beside the two sisters before a flame floated out of nothingness to light itself within the oven. The countertops congealed, the pots and pans hung in the air before racks appeared to give them something to hang on. The only dream scene remaining was that of the orphanage, with the two nervous mothers and their soon-to-be daughter.

Twilight slumped against the counter as it re-materialized behind her back. Her head fell into her hooves and she sobbed. “If I could go back, change one thing,” she whimpered, “it would be this. I’d never have singled Alya out, and we could have raised a normal filly together.”

Throughout the duration of Twilight’s spell, Luna hadn’t shown any emotion. Twilight had spent enough time with her sister to know that she reserved emotion for when she felt it was appropriate. It was another trait that made her difficult to be around.

“Motherhood isn’t about knowing everything that will happen.” Luna approached Twilight with an outstretched wing, gently stroking her feathers over Twilight’s head. “I’ve never been a mother, but I don’t believe there is any textbook you can study for it. There’s no way to always know what’s coming when you’re always being tested.”

“I didn’t expect you to understand,”sniffed Twilight bitterly. She held her hoof against her phantom daughter’s chin as the last remnants of the dream orphanage faded away, leaving the two ponies back in the dull oven heat and pale light. It must have been nearly dawn by now. The first grey glimpses of daylight made the kitchen look fresh, yet wrapped in a drowsy blanket that made you want to shove your head back beneath your pillow.

Twilight shuddered as she felt Luna sit down against the counter beside her, then a truly remarkable thing happened.

Luna began to weep. It wasn’t from pity, or worry for her sister, either. Her sobs were deep, they came from inside her. They were her own sobs, and for a snippet of a moment, Twilight thought that Luna may be in more pain than she herself.

“You feel afraid and betrayed,” choked Luna. “Many years ago I felt the same about the ones I loved, and….well, you know where that got me.” She stared blankly at the ground, wiping her cheeks.

Suddenly she laughed.

“You know what’s funny?”

Twilight shook her head.

“I feel like I’m putting you through the same inquisition Celestia put me through over a thousand years ago, right before….” she paused and looked sad again for a moment. Then she shrugged. “You know…..right before I became Nightmare Moon. I never imagined I would be doing this.”

Twilight looked up earnestly at Luna. She felt cold and numb, and suddenly very tired. It looked—and felt—as though the world was still melting away around her.

“But,” Luna continued, after tremendous pause, “I’m here now, your sister, crying my head off with you. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the ones who love me, the ones who refused to give up on me, and I’m grateful.”

Twilight smiled, but couldn’t find the words to say, in fact she was finding it difficult to think at all. She felt a dizziness overtaking her, and a strange pain in her leg that should not be there.

Luna stood to her hooves. Twilight tried to do the same, but found that she couldn’t move at all. She felt like all her limbs were braced by icy iron rods, except for her right leg, which felt searing hot.

“Luna….” she grunted, “I….I think something’s wrong. I can’t….can’t get up!”

Luna didn’t seem to hear Twilight, or even care that she’d suddenly become paralyzed. She stepped up to the oven and idly tapped her horn against the bricks. The wall of the oven rippled from the tip of Luna’s horn like a pond with a stone cast into it. She looked back down to Twilight with an expressionless face streaked with tears, yet still somehow managed to look kindly.

“Being a mother is filled with all kinds of wonderful, unexpected turns, and it isn’t your job to know what they are. You didn’t know that Alya would fall into the lake, either. You were simply there for your daugher.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I can’t move! My leg….rrgh! Feels like it’s burning up! And what’s going on with the walls?”

The rippling waves emanating from the oven traveled further until they were all around the kitchen. Twilight didn’t know what she was seeing. Her own head felt like it was rippling in tune with the rest of the world. She was sure her leg was on fire now, but it hardly mattered when she was losing her mind. Everything started to swirl again, but she certainly wasn’t creating the dream this time.

The world grew dim and formless, and out of the void came Luna’s soothing, loving voice.

“Your heart is strong, Twilight. I know deep down inside you, you’ll find the answer you need. I know in the end you’ll do the right thing.

Always remember, there are ponies who will never give up on you.”

Comments

[Rhombicosidodecahedron]

I'm just confused

[DivinePanzer]

Ok. Hold up.

Celestia is upset in part because Twilight refuses to nurse their child...

That they got 2 years ago...

From an orphanage where Alya was passed over dozens of times...

Screw Twilight's hangups, WHY THE HELL ARE THEY BREASTFEEDING A 3+ YEAR OLD?!?!?!